Regional History Colloquium- Leslie Stainton, PhD “Thaddeus Stevens at the Fulton: On Stage and Off”

Leslie Stainton is the author of Lorca: A Dream of Life, which received the Society of Midland Authors Award for Biography. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Opera News, American Theatre, Michigan Quarterly Review, and River Teeth, among many other journals.  She recently published a history of the Fulton Theatre entitled Staging Ground, which interweaves past and present, private anecdote and public record, to unfold the story of this emblematic space, where for more than 250 years Americans scripted and rescripted their histores.  In the lead-up to the Civil War, Thaddeus Stevens repeatedly took the stage of the Fulton Theatre to decry slavery. But Lancaster officials deemed later portrayals of him an insult to his reputation and banned showings of The Clansman and Birth of a Nation at the Fulton.  Leslie Staintonexamines these controversial events and traces Stevens’s legacy on stage and screen, from antebellum days to Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln.